Limit the number of items included in transfer when source is a filesystem Merged

IBM MQ MFT is particularly unstable, especially when large numbers of files are being transferred. In my current environment, where a single transfer will often involve hundreds and sometimes thousands of files, transfers often stall, and agents will become unresponsive, requiring manual intervention.

When the source for a scheduled transfer is a filesystem, the transfer will automatically include all the files that match the pattern, with no moderation possible. If the transfer is not concluded within the scheduled interval for this (repeating) transfer, MFT will start a new transfer, which includes the same (large) batch of files, which will also stall. If we are, through manual intervention, somehow able to restart the transfer, the files in it are delivered *again*, because the transfer is not a transactional process.

A simple addition to the transfer definition will allow us to limit the number of items if the source is a file system. This would reduce the number of stalled transfers, unresponsive agents, and need for manual intervention. As an example, I'll include a sample transfer definition with an added @maxMatches attribute in the <source/file> element:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<request version="3.00" xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="FileTransfer.xsd">
  <managedTransfer>
    <originator>
      <hostName>example.com.</hostName>
      <userID>fteuser</userID>
    </originator>
    <sourceAgent QMgr="agent1qm" agent="AGENT1"/>
    <destinationAgent QMgr="agent2qm" agent="AGENT2"/>
    <transferSet>
      <item checksumMethod="MD5" mode="binary">
        <source disposition="delete" recursive="false">
          <file maxMatches="32">c:\sourcefiles\*.jpg</file>
        </source>
        <destination exist="error" type="directory">
          <file>/targetfiles/images</file>
        </destination>
      </item>
    </transferSet>
  </managedTransfer>
</request>